Aisha (ra)-Paradigms of Leadership

Mothers of the Believers as Central Figures

So we do have these mothers of the believers, which you don't get in early Buddhism or early Christianity or in the story of Moses. It's a distinctive feature of Islam that you have the twelve apostles of female, and all different, and some of them really strong personalities. Maybe Aisha is the strongest.

She answered back. Even though she married really young, she was a very independent personality. She didn't just go into quiet retirement after her husband died, after nine years of amazing marriage. But she wanted to be out there. We'll talk about that in due course.

So we have these positive role models. Does anybody, at least from the Ahlus Sunnah, ever dare to criticize any of them as moral, perfected, saintly women? Of course not. We have that core, that female core, which is quite unlike, say, the biblical story.

If we open any text on Christian feminist theology, and they're all grumbling about the Bible, bad women, femme fatale, scarlet women, who bring down the whole story, beginning with their rather unpleasant view of Sayyidina Eve and how she's responsible for original sin and everything, which is not our position at all.

Temptresses like Delilah, like Jezebel, the Witch of Endor. There's lots of them. Generally, the female conspicuous characters in the Bible are kind of negative, femme fatale, temptress-type figures.

And those stories don't exist. The only one that does exist is, of course, Imran ibn al-Aziz, Potiphar's wife. But even that, she's not really depicted as somebody evil. She's just kind of lost it. She's gone. He's beautiful.

The women, when they see him, they cut their hands because they're so amazed. It's really about love and the crazy things that lovers do, rather than about wickedness. And, of course, in all of the Muslim stories that develop that, in the Tafsir, she ends up as a convert, and maybe in some of them, in Nizami's account, she ends up marrying Sayyidina Yusuf, and so forth. There's a happy ending.

So that's really quite a different understanding, the shift in the way these stories are told between the sometimes quite concerning biblical archetypes and the Quranic correction of the stories tells you a lot about the Quran's agenda when it comes to women.

Even the Virgin Mary. Everybody's thinking, away in a manger at the moment. Christmas is in a couple of days. In John's Gospel, Jesus doesn't really treat Mary very nicely. The wedding of Cana, the wine runs out, and she comes saying, what can be done? And he says, woman, what have I to do with you? Which, however you translate it, is kind of not very respectful to your own mother.

This is an issue, again, for the Christian feminists. One of the first things that Sayyidina Isa says, he's just born, when he says, good to my mother, and those negative stories about the women are simply not present in our scripture.

That has to mean something significant, that this new dispensation is not going to say, gender is whatever you feel like at a particular moment, but neither is it going to say that a woman is a particular stereotype of being a temptress and the authoress of original sin and the one who brought John the Baptist's head to Herod, or whatever these biblical stories are. We don't get those stories. We don't get them, and that has to be significant.

So it's not feministic in the modern sense, but it's not anti-women at all, and the fact that we have the mothers of the believers is very significant.

Women Without Children: A Divine Mystery

Another aspect, of course, which is kind of part of the prophetic mystery is the fact that whereas in all traditional societies women were overwhelmingly valued for having children, what would the Virgin Mary be without Christ and so forth? That's their principal function. With the mothers of the believers, we don't get that, do we?

Khadija has the four daughters. Amazing, what a household that must have been. Only one of them outlives him, and only by six months. Otherwise, this corner in the mosque in Medina where they're all living, it's not kind of kids crying all the time. It must have been quiet and prayerful.

Why? We don't know. Al-Qa'd kind of looks at this and speculates, why have you got these women, many of whom are young, not all of them, there's no children? Although there is an account in some of the Muslim historians that says that Aisha has a miscarriage. The boy is well enough formed to be given a name, Abdallah. But that's it. We know that was a great source of sorrow for her.

But this is part of the divine arrangement of the lives of these mothers of the believers, that they don't have children.

Al-Qa'd goes around to a lot of doctors and he says, what's going on? He thinks, well, maybe the stress of the hijrah, or maybe the malaria, which is endemic in Medina, which we know that Sayyidatina Aisha suffered from, maybe it kind of disappears in a cloud of speculation. It doesn't take you very far.

But the important thing from this, whatever the divine purpose might have been, whatever that means, is that here you have a valorization of the women, which has nothing to do with the fact that they have the son, who is the one who it's all about. They are in themselves esteemed as mothers of the believers. They are matriarchs of everyone. The Sahabah would say, Ummah, mother, when they passed one of them.

The Quran says, Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is Allah's messenger and the seal of the messengers. It's kind of anticipated in this verse that this is something he wants, but it's not in Allah'staqdeer.

So again we have, and this can be very beneficial for a lot of modern women, for reasons that are usually not their fault at all. Don't get married. Infertility is more common now. All kinds of issues. We have this kind of population of Muslim women, and non-Muslim women certainly, who can't find husbands.

The Atlantic Monthly did a story recently where all the husbands gone, or something they called it. It's a phenomenon, childlessness, husbandlessness. And there's a certain kind of way in which the story of these women is a way of giving them role models and allowing them to feel that the important things of life are still what they have achieved.

The purpose of woman is not just to be um somebody. The purpose of woman is to be herself, and to follow the prophet, and to be virtuous, and to feed the poor, to be um al-masakin, or that al-mitaqin, or whoever it was to acquire these amazing titles. It seems to me it's another interesting gift of this enigmatic, curious, but inspiring scenario.

Islam's Revolution: Marriage as Sacred

Another aspect of it, I promised it wouldn't be a lecture on gender, but kind of you can't escape it when you're thinking about the mothers of the believers, is that one of the shattering revolutions which Islam introduced into the wider Near East was the idea that it's okay to get married, which Christianity had said well only for kind of emergency situations, but the elite, and the saints, and the bishops, and the priests, and the apostles, they don't get married, not really.

And it's still a big issue in the Catholic Church. The Orthodox Church, the priests can get married, but the bishops can't because the bishops have to be monks. The whole monastic tradition:

The Quran says, of monasticism, they didn't observe it correctly. It's not easy to abandon the most fundamental human, biological, hormonal impulse to get married, to say goodbye to loneliness, to have children, to be part of the web of life. That's difficult.

It doesn't work particularly well. And all of these scandals which are tearing apart the church in the West at the moment to do with the fact that you can't really defeat biology, not really, because you're

part of biology. Some people may do it, but to make it a kind of rule as part of their sharia for priests, not working particularly well.

And it also generates a lot of loneliness. You talk to Catholic priests, as I do sometimes, the worst thing about celibacy is actually the loneliness. You go back to your single bed at night in the monastery or the priest's house and there's nothing. There's no woman's touch in the house. It's not easy for your whole life. And knowing that there's no prospect of that ever changing.

We now have, of course, a Ministry of Loneliness in the UK, don't we? And most of the victims or the patients diagnosed as a medical condition by the NHS, most of them are women.

So one of the things, and again, this takes us out of the sort of cultural possibilities of 2023, is that polygamy actually is the solution to that. Polygamy is the solution to that.

And it's a primordial human institution. Most Native Americans before the Europeans rolled up accepted polygamy as a matter of course. In a traditional hunter-gatherer situation, the men are more at risk. They're more likely to be eaten by wild beasts while hunting in the desert, more likely to be speared by other tribesmen. You always have a surplus of women. Polygamy is the obvious way of preventing them from being lonely.

It's kind of a fittery, normal institution. Even amongst the ancient Israelites, leatherate marriage was an aspect of that. So this is another way in which, as we get into our time machine to visit those times, we have to leave behind the kind of boy-meets-girl scenario and get into a space where it was understood boy-meets-girls could also work.

So it's kind of overcoming the Christian-inhibited loneliness-courting environment of Egypt, Syria, the Christian world which Islam came to supplant.

The Strength of Women in Traditional Societies

Another thing to bear in mind is the strength that women in traditional societies had to have. The men were out spearing gazelles or whatever for each other. The women were dealing with certain biological realities, which in those more or less paleolithic circumstances were really dangerous, life- threatening, excruciating.

So here's an account from one woman from that time which indicates that the female thing was not a kind of soft and easy option. She's saying she was actually lucky with her children. Which of your births and babies was easiest? I don't know. I didn't give birth to any of them at the wrong time of the month or as a breech birth, nor did I become pregnant when still breastfeeding, nor did I breastfeed a thirsty child in a time of great heat, nor did I have to make a baby sleep on a hard and stony place, nor did I have to feed a baby with meat from the lungs or the liver, which are difficult to digest, nor did I have to put him to sleep at night when I was angry and exhausted.

Traditional maternity, really difficult. And as a result, the women tended to be really quite resilient and strong. If you look at the image of these women in the Sira, they tend to be, they're not pussycats, they're strong, determined women.

And that is the result of the fact that the feminine estate in the biology leads them to have to make huge sacrifices. To be a mother, especially then, required tremendous resources of resilience, pain control, sorrow control, dealing with hormones, dealing with postnatal depression and so forth. All of these sacrifices that women as part of the womanly nature are heir to as a result of the biology.

And back then, it was much more intense because there was no kind of daycare centre you could go off to and no nice midwife from the NHS who could give you a shot of something. They were basically their own midwives. So that's one explanation for why so many of the women in this period seem to be really forceful.

But the Jahiliyyah also, because of the culture, tended to victimise women a lot in a place where there is no proper law or legislation or state. Women tend to suffer most. They're the ones who get abducted. They're the ones who are the victims of anger, of a revenge culture, of the vendetta culture.

And again, this is one of the things that was transformed by the replacement of the old feuding culture of the Arabs with the idea of the Sharia.

Aisha's Birth and Family Background

Aisha is, well, and her father, Abu Bakr, from the clan of Taimah, Bani Taimah, who are famous aristocrats in the sense of being people with noble qualities. They tend not to be warriors. They're more into the trade and animal husbandry business. And you find, generally, Abu Bakr's family, his sons and his daughters, really quite dignified and strong people.

You may recall when we were looking at the Hijrah, the story of Aisha's sister, Asma' bint Abu Bakr, dhat al-nitaqayn, and how she was the one who kept the Holy Prophet ﷺ and As-Siddiq fed and watered in their cave when Quraysh was out looking for them. She had to do it by night, going out on her own with a considerable quantity of supplies, finding her way to the cave. She was really, really courageous.

So, yeah, these are strong women, and the women from Bani Taimah, particularly well-known from this. Incidentally, when I was talking about Suqayna, one of her best friends, Aisha bint Talha, a literary figure, another kind of aristocratic woman, very strong personality, was also from Bani Taimah, connected to the great early poet Omar bin Abi Rabi'ah, the great love poet of early Islam. So she's from this good family.

She learns to read. Aisha can read. And because of the transformations that Islam is bringing, women are able to get into the mercantile space a little bit more fully because they have the complete legal autonomy to buy and to sell and to inherit.

Aisha bint Abi Bakr (Part 1 of 2)

So we're going to talk about Aisha bint Abi Bakr. Aisha is one of the most important figures in Islamic history. She's the wife of the Holy Prophet . She's a major transmitter of Hadith. She's a major interpreter of the Quran. She's a major figure in the early civil wars. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic law. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic theology. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic spirituality. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic culture. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic politics. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic society. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic education. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic art. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic literature. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic music. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic architecture. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic science. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic philosophy. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic mysticism. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic ethics. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic jurisprudence. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic history. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic civilization. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic thought. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic culture. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic politics. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic society. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic education. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic art. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic literature. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic music. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic architecture. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic science. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic philosophy. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic mysticism. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic ethics. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic jurisprudence. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic history. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic civilization. She's a major figure in the development of Islamic thought.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very politicized. And she's a figure who is very aestheticized. And she's a figure who is very eroticized. And she's a figure who is very spiritualized. And she's a figure who is very intellectualized. And she's a figure who is very moralized. And she's a figure who is very legalized. And she's a figure who is very historicized. And she's a figure who is very civilized. And she's a figure who is very thought. And she's a figure who is very cultured. And she's a figure who is very political. And she's a figure who is very social. And she's a figure who is very educated. And she's a figure who is very artistic. And she's a figure who is very literary. And she's a figure who is very musical. And she's a figure who is very architectural. And she's a figure who is very scientific. And she's a figure who is very philosophical. And she's a figure who is very mystical. And she's a figure who is very ethical. And she's a figure who is very jurisprudential. And she's a figure who is very historical. And she's a figure who is very civilizational. And she's a figure who is very thoughtful. And she's a figure who is very cultured.

So she's a major figure. And she's also a figure who is very controversial. And she's a figure who is very misunderstood. And she's a figure who is very misrepresented. And she's a figure who is very demonized. And she's a figure who is very idealized. And she's a figure who is very romanticized. And she's a figure who is very vilified. And she's a figure who is very sanctified. And she's a figure who is very mythologized. And she's a figure who is

And she asked her husband, what do you think about this? And he kind of agreed. So Abu Bakr's promise of the betrothal was at an end.

So according to most of the historians, the khitbah, the proposal to the Holy Prophet was completed about three years before the hijrah at a mahr of 400 dirhams.

The Controversy Over Age

Here we have the familiar controversy. How old was she? And Aqad has a whole thing in which he deals with this quite competently. It's only been an issue, really, in the 20th century because before the 20th century, child marriages were kind of normal.

Richard II of England had a queen who was six years old. William of Orange had a wife of nine. It was normal in the pre-modern world.

Catholic canon law until about 100 years ago said that you could marry at the age of 12. Now I think the age is 14 in Catholic law. Of course, they followed the law of the land, which is usually later than that, but in principle, Catholic marriage is valid at that time.

The Roman Empire girls married at 12, etc. It's kind of an anachronism to say, well, nowadays you can't get married until you're 18. So the whole idea of child marriages is kind of strange to us.

It's also the case, and Aqad does this pretty well, that, as we mentioned, people didn't have birth certificates and the sources do differ. So Aqad's theory is that Abu Bakr would not have betrothed her to a polytheist after he'd become Muslim. Very unlikely.

And therefore she must have been in this world before his conversion. In other words, those accounts in Ibn Sa'ad and al-Suwaid that suggest she was actually older than some of the other hadiths do carry some weight. And actually she might have been about 14 when she was married.

If you accept this view that Abu Bakr would not have betrothed his daughter to a pagan. Here's quite an interesting chapter on that.

Jonathan Brown, in his Misquoting Muhammad, has probably the best general description of this issue, pointing out how silly and anachronistic it is.

Life in the Prophetic Household

In any case, Aisha absolutely gets into this new role. Never says that she misses her father's house. Certainly never regrets the marriage.

And her childishness is kind of part of the betrothal and would have been understood as normal at the time. So, famous account. So, a hadith that the Ethiopians were once playing on the field with a drum. On the day of their Eid, with their weapons, they were kind of having mock fights.

And so he asked her, do you want to take a look? And she said, yes. And he says, so he placed me behind him. We were very close. And he was saying, fearing one side, which is an Arab way of referring to Abyssinians. Until finally I got bored. And then he said, have you had enough? And I said, yes. And he said, off you go.

She's still playing with dolls, still playing with her little friends in the period of Makkah, when it's just a betrothal and the formal consummation has not yet taken place.

There's a lot of stories of kind of fun at that time. Jokes that the Holy Prophet would play with all of his wives. Once he said, when I die, the one of you who joins me soonest will be the one with the longest hand. So then the wives started to compare hands with each other to see who's got the longest hand. And they all hoped that they would have the longest hand.

Then they realised that what he meant was sadaqah. It's a metaphor, it means giving sadaqah most. So they envied Zainab bin Jahsh, the mother of the poor, for her famous generosity.

Love in the Prophetic Marriage

But one thing that we do see in this world, and we've left the 21st century behind, we're looking at that world in terms of the realities of that world and the reality of how these two people were growing close, that she was his beloved from an early age. There was actual love there.

Okay, Montgomery Watts says, well, this connected the Holy Prophet to the tribe of Taim, to Abu Bakr, and then Hafsa connected him to Omar's tribe, etc. You can see how that works. But there's also love going on.

He would say, Aisha is the person I love most.

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 3662)

And obviously much of their married life and their close life we don't know about, but there's plenty of clues.

So they had a name for their understanding, their intimacy, their mutual knowledge. They called it al- urwah al-wuthqah, the firmest bond, that which bound them together, which made them close.

So sometimes she would ask him, (كَيْفَ حَالُ الْعُرْوَةِ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ؟ - How is the bond, ya Rasulullah?) And he would say, as it always was, it hasn't changed.

This is the idea that women need reassurance. Do you love me? Do you love me? I told you five times this morning already. Do you love me? Yeah.

So this was the word that they had for their special mutual understanding, which seems to have been very profound and very deep. And he's 53 and she's whatever she is, a teenager. Hard for us to imagine. It's just a different world. And it seems to have been real. It was a very real and profound love and fondness that they had for each other.

This, in the context of the battle against the Christian cult of celibacy and loneliness and the absence of this kind of unique closeness with another person that's possible in a marital relationship, a closer convergence of souls than is possible in any other human situation, that this is one of the triggers for what becomes the most profound overthrowing of really the literature of the world, which is the introduction of the principle of love or mahabba into Islamic literature.

Omar bin Abi Rabi, who I've mentioned, is the first great poet in newly Islamised Arabia. And it's all love poems. They took the ancient Qasida, which was the standard long ode of the ancient pre-Islamic poet, much of which is boasting about how fast his camel is and about how his spears chase away the rabble of the rival tribe.

But it begins with a kind of what they call nasib, which is an amatory or a romantic preface about his beloved and so forth, the beauty of his beloved, eyes like gazelles, etc. And the first great transformation in Arabic literature that happens as a result of Islamisation is that that nasib becomes the ghazal. It becomes a love poem in its own right.

Which the ancient Arabs had never done. And Omar bin Abi Rabi's poetry is basically all about that. It sometimes talks about how fast is my camel. He does that. But the focus now is shifted. And it's about his beloved, Leyla, Thelma, Nu'm.

And a lot of outsider scholars find this strange. Isn't Islam terribly stern and puritanical and inhibited?

And why is it that suddenly Arabic poetry, when Islam comes, turns into love poetry and this doesn't compute with them?

But for us, looking at these relationships, it's kind of obvious that in the prophetic household there is this incredible love. The love that is not... Well, in a sense, there isn't profane love. Because love is the perception of perfection, which perfection comes from God. If you perceive beauty, if you perceive goodness, those are things that point you towards the divine.

It's platonic love, if you like. And this overthrowing of the severe Christian penitential view about attraction and marriage, one of the big transformations that Islam affects in the Near East.

And what we're seeing is, with the prophetic household, not parenting, but a very remarkable combination of domesticity with spiritual guidance. They're kind of living together and he's helping with the cooking or the sewing or whatever it is that he does, according to the hadith and his kind of household chores being done together.

But basically he's teaching them Quran, he's teaching them fiqh, he's teaching them forms of tasbih.

This corner of the mosque, which is for the women, is kind of like a zawiyah, and it's right next to the

suffa, which is where the male companions were there just for dhikr and for Allah, and have renounced the world, is the veranda, which is outside the apartments of the prophetic wives, which are small.

You can see old plans of the mosque in Medina, and you can see this is the room of Zainab, this is the room of Aisha, and so forth. They're pretty small. So the famous hadiths where he's doing tahajjud at night, and she said, I would have to move my legs up for him to do sujood.

These rooms are small. Some said they don't have windows. The ceiling is so low that you can just stand up in it, but it doesn't even have that added kind of rest or relaxation coming from having a higher ceiling. The doors are not made of wood, but of sackcloth. It's really kind of austere, monastic stuff.

It's like a monastery, but not a monastery. It's a very unusual thing in the world's religious history, and it's all Quran and tilawah and dhikr and the Holy Prophet giving them guidance, and it's like a kind of zawiyah, a spiritual retreat.

So the husband is the murshid, and beauty and love, which become the great themes of our sacred literature, seem to be first cultivated in that environment. The idea of the shahid and the shahida, the human being whose beauty and whose purity recalls the divine qualities.

The idea of the shahid, the human witness, is very standard in the Sufi poetry, appreciating the lover as somebody who draws you towards the sublime and the transcendent. Also the proleptic libidinal, in other words, the idea that there will be love and romance and intimacy in paradise, also makes this something sacred.

Some Muslims nowadays find this a bit edgy and difficult because of what someone calls victorianizing of Muslim sensibilities following the appearance of disapproving Victorian missionaries in India and Egypt and places in the 19th century.

Everybody became very kind of puritanical, and a shame culture developed. You don't find a shame culture in early Islam at all, or in very traditional parts of the Muslim world, this kind of inhibited anxiety about the body and its natural functions, something that absolutely is not there in early Islam.

Because all of these things are not just about the principle of life, but they're also about paradise itself. It's a lived anticipation of the life of the blessed. So love and closeness as the context for the revealing of signs, and also the closeness to the soul of the other.

The qalb, or the ruh, is where the divine mysteries appear. The ruh is the great mystery. You've been given only a little bit of knowledge about it. Even he is told.

With intimacy, married intimacy, you get so close to another person in a way that's not possible otherwise, that you start to see certain spiritual signs. A lot of people in very good religiously oriented marriages have reported that kind of thing.

So Islamic literature from that time really becomes focused on love, beauty, love, life, its celebrator.

It's what Nietzsche would identify as the Dionysian principle and not the Apollonians.

Aisha as Ambassador to Women

Before he died, he was already putting her in a kind of public position as what Aqab calls his ambassador to the women. So when women came to him for bay'ah or to ask questions about religion, she would be present.

Sometimes when they were shy about certain women's issues, they would come to her rather than to him for advice. Or if he felt shy, something very kind of technical about some women's thing was being asked out of his shyness. He didn't necessarily want to speak about it, but she would answer on his behalf.

This grew until men came to ask her questions as well. Sometimes they would write to her. We have some little bits of letters that she would send to people in response to their requests for advice about religion.

There's a famous one, a letter that came to her from Muawiyah asking for some nasiha, some religious advice. And so she says:

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2414)

This is a hadith that she chooses to send back to him. Whoever hopes to please God by annoying the people, God will protect him from the annoyance of the people. And whoever hopes to please the people by annoying Allah, Allah will hand him over to the people.

Okay, so I'm sure when he got that letter he thought, okay.

The Ascetic Life

Yeah, so the ascetic life, these really small apartments, that heat must have been pretty difficult. He would eat from the rough bread of barley but wouldn't eat enough to satisfy him, to satiety. He wouldn't eat his fill. And never in a single day did he have both bread and oil together.

So this is the monastic life, but different from a monastic life. It's the monastic life except that he has responsibilities towards the public welfare and that he has a family life as well. It's a very new form of existence.

The Incident of the Lie (Hadith al-Ifk)

We should talk about what we can learn about this famous or notorious episode called the incident of the lie, hadith al-ifk. The Holy Prophet ﷺ is building this new form of uniting the tribes of Arabia and of course there's a lot of pushback against this.

The leader of the opposition in Medina is the notorious Abdullah ibn Ubay ibn Salul, chief of the munafiqeen in Medina who is a leader of the Khazraj tribe which is one of the two biggest tribes in Medina. He can't be disregarded. Like a lot of people whose positions feel a little bit undermined by this new reality in Medina, he's kind of looking to re-establish himself maybe even calling himself king of Medina.

And one way always in which you can undermine rivals is through gossip, through the manipulation of stories, who claims to have been compromising information, exaggerating things.

So many people in Medina are looking for ways of undermining and destroying the new order. There are conspiracies to kill the Holy Prophet ﷺ. It's very tense. Quite apart from the fact that there's Quraysh and the other tribes who want to come and wipe out the Muslim community.

So the leader of the other main tribe in Medina, Usaid ibn Hudair, tells the Holy Prophet ﷺ about the leader of the Khazraj and that he wants to be king of Medina. And this event happens on the return from a campaign called Ghazwat Banu Mustariq which is a hurried return because they know that Medina's truce with one of the hostile Arab tribes has expired. So they want to get back to defend the city before that tribe might melt and attack.

And everything is hurried and chaotic. During this return, some of the different Arab tribes, even though they're all Muslims now, they kind of get tribalized when they're disputing over a busy world. Ibn Ubay speaks up and tells his Medinan friends, his Ansar friends, this is what happens when you get immigration basically.

These people are anti-immigration. They don't like the Muhajireen, these immigrants. He says, this is what you've done. It's almost like Nigel Farage talking. This is what you've done to your own country. You've allowed them into your land and you've shared your wealth with them.

If you stop supporting them, they'll go to somebody else's country. And when the Holy Prophet ﷺ hears this, he's always aware of the danger of people backsliding into Medina versus Mecca, tribes versus each other. He summons him and Ibn Ubay says, swears an oath by Allah, saying he never says such a thing. It's all slander, of course not, he's a good Muslim.

So the return from the Ghazwa continues and they're in a hurry. There's also a sandstorm which wipes out the trail and kind of makes it even more difficult to get back.

And quite close to Medina, they camp for the night. Aisha goes off to fulfill a need of nature. It's dark, obviously:

And she's lost her necklace. That can be quite a thing if it's a sentimental value. Somebody precious gave it to you. It's important, you remember things by it. My wedding ring, whatever, I'm going to call the best plumbers in the world to get down to the bottom of the sump to see if it's there. You don't leave it alone.

So she's kind of going around in the darkness looking for it. It takes some time. She finds it, she returns. The caravan's gone. They thought she was in Palanquin, the howdah, where she would be fielded on the camel. She's so light that they thought she's there. And off they went.

So she's on her own in the former campsite. So she sits down in the desert. It's quiet. Nobody's there waiting for them to come back. Sooner or later they'll spot that she's not there. Surely they'll come back for her.

And then one of the sahaba, Safwan ibn al-Mu'atil, who's a very respected sahabi, had been riding behind the army, partly to guard it, as a kind of rear guard, but partly also to pick up anything that might have been dropped. And he sees her, and of course what he says is:

"Verily we belong to Allah, and verily to Him do we return."

Immediately the difficulty of the situation, which he can't now escape, is evident to him. And he says:

Mother, arise and ride.

They have to go by camel or they'll never catch up. And so only a few hours later they catch up with the army.

Seems like an obvious thing to have happened. Ibn Ubayy again gets going and starts to say:

Look, the wife of your prophet spent the night with a man. And then in the morning he turns up leading her on the camel.

And starts very cleverly through his contacts to put this gossip, this slander around. And she goes back to Medina and she's sick. She has her malaria again, it's really bad.

I'm back in Medina, back at home, and I'm really suffering for a month from this fever and not knowing that around me everyone is spreading this gossip, this claim.

Her mother is nursing her, she doesn't know what's being said. And then a female relative tells her and she says she got sicker. She went back to her room. She couldn't sleep all night.

The Munafiqun have created a very clever, complex, lifelike story, spread it around the city.

Aisha goes to her parents. They don't really know how to deal with this. There's no cameras, there's no GPS on people's mobiles and how you track people's movements. Nobody knows what it is. It's clear, though, that she's been set up.

The Holy Prophet ﷺ is also unhappy, but he refuses to accuse her. But he has a difficulty here, because he can't just, on his own initiative, say, I excuse her, she's innocent. Not possible. Because Ibn Ubayy is hoping for him to do that, because then he could say, oh, this abolition of tribalism and kinship ties and so forth.

When it's his wife that's involved, he's going to disregard all of that. If it was some other woman, he wouldn't do this. So this is all nonsense come to me, this idea of equality amongst the tribes isn't going to work.

And the Holy Prophet ﷺ kind of understands that. He's establishing an order in which everybody is equal ethically and before the law. And just to override that and say, she's innocent, go away. He can't be guilty of favoritism, even though it is his beloved woman he trusts more than anybody else.

So how is he to deal with this? How is she to deal with this? Again, she's in tears. And then... And then when the Holy Prophet ﷺ doesn't know what to do, he can't say she's innocent because that's overturning the normal judicial and ethical processes.

But he's not going to say she's guilty. This kind of situation is a stalemate. Then revelation comes.

That came to Allah's Messenger, that which would come to him whenever the revelation descended. And when that revelation was lifted from him, he was laughing, smiling. And the sweat was pouring from him.

The first thing he said was, Allah has declared that you are innocent.

"Indeed, those who came with falsehood are a group from among you. Do not think it bad for you; rather it is good for you."

So that was kind of the end of one of the big crisis moments. Again, it's this tribal thing having to be suppressed, but putting the new leadership in extraordinarily difficult situation. And then there's a divine revelation which indicates her value and which also indicates that this was the new religion actually breaking this kind of stalemate.

But it did hurt her, certainly. A very difficult time for her.

The Death of the Prophet

The Holy Prophet ﷺ dies, and it's an indication of his particular love for her. He dies in her room with his head on her lap. This is a great catastrophe of her life.

Really, it's a great catastrophe of Muslim history and of all history. And it was her test. He was no longer there, but he had taught her the sacred virtues, the characteristically Islamic virtues, which are the opposite of the jahili virtues of emoting, the virtues of rida and sabr and taslim.

Islam is all about accepting the divine decree and not overreacting or becoming excessively emotional. That doesn't mean that you don't weep and you don't do the normal human mourning things, but it does mean that you can't defy Allah's decree. It's profoundly consoling, of course, to people to know that this is divine wisdom which we can't understand.

That's the best way of consoling the bereaved. But still, she's his beloved and she's shattered. She said: So she said, Holy Prophet's head was in my lap and I felt it becoming heavier and I looked at his face and his eyes were turned up and he was saying, He died in my lap, she said.

I was not wronging anybody. And then I placed his head on the pillow and stood to grieve with the other women and slapping my face. That's normal. Certain forms of grieving and mourning are kind of natural, spontaneous things and shouldn't be suppressed because it's almost a biological reflex.

But it's the rebellion against Allah's decree which the Holy Prophet ﷺ had warned against. If he wasn't present at his burial, again, you can always see these tribal things. Even though this momentous thing has happened, they're already discussing, do we dig the grave the Medinan way or the Meccan way?

The Medinan way is flat at the bottom, the Meccan way has a little curve. They're still thinking about this. In the end, their wisdom prevails and it's a kind of combination of the two.

Women were saying, we didn't know that he was being buried until we heard the shovels in the darkness of the night.

Then after his death, even when the treasury becomes full and she's given a pension, she doesn't leave that place. He's buried in her room. She could have gone off to some nice villa in some of the more affluent suburbs of Medina like Al-Aqiq, Al-Sunq. She stays there, feeling that he is still in her house, feeling that he's still with him.

When they saw this, people realized why the Holy Prophet's wife could never marry again. He was still there in some way, in dreams. She would do Tasbeeh there, she would be reading the Quran.

And then when Abu Bakr, two years later, is buried by his side, of course she's got her father and her husband in her house, in her bedroom basically, although there's a small screen. And when Omar is buried, she moves into the next room because Omar is not in the mahram.

So she really felt a kind of ongoing presence. We don't know what the spiritual connection was because generally in Islam these things are regarded as incommunicable, but she certainly didn't want to leave.

So in the day she would be in the mosque teaching, behind a screen with all these hadiths and fiqh, and then she would go to the grave and offer her Tasbeeh and prayers or do some housework.

She grew very close to Hafsa during the first caliphs. And then we've got time for sort of political events.

The Political Crisis Under Uthman

Before we finish, of course, Uthman's reign is a time of unease for many. We've done a class on Uthman, and what we saw was that he's one of the most beloved companions of the Holy Prophet ﷺ who marries two of his daughters, one after the other one dies and he marries the other, Luqayya, I think. Dhunnurain, the Holy Prophet ﷺ calls him the man of the two lights.

Uthman's political strategy has been, I'm now controlling this enormous new country. Most of the population are not Muslim. Most of them are different kinds of Christian or Zoroastrian. This is not easy. The Arabs are coming out of their Jahiliyyah, but a lot of the tribesmen are still kind of tribal rather than thinking in terms of Islamic equality.

There are all kinds of different ideas as to how I should be and who I should appoint. And his conclusion seems to have been that the best thing to do is to appoint people who he really knew and who he was related to, even if they weren't sort of pillars of piety, because he knew he could rely upon them to keep the thing together.

So he would appoint family members to key governorships in Egypt, Basra and so forth, and this generated resentment. People thought, no, it's the most pious who should be in these positions, not people who he can rely upon because their cousins look like nepotism.

To some, it looked like the recrudescence of the old Arab tribal thing, and that really triggered a lot of people. So here the sources have been filtered by later generations so much that we can't really tell exactly what happened, except that we know that Aisha also, she went to Uthman, who's still in Medina, of course, the capital, hasn't moved to Damascus yet.

She goes to him holding one of the sandals of the Holy Prophet ﷺ, telling him that in these appointments he seems to have departed from the sunnah. Some people said, why are women getting involved? Certainly not, while others took her side.

She's not saying he should be deposed, she's just saying that these appointments of family members might seem to make sense in terms of the exigencies of real politics, but a lot of people are getting really unhappy.

And then in Egypt, Uthman's governor, Abdullah, faces an accusation that he's wrongly executed someone, so now the Egyptians come to Aisha's house to complain. She's kind of the symbolic center

of probity and authenticity in the city, and she's the one who finds all of these people are coming to her.

So she writes to the caliph, and she becomes, although she doesn't mean to be, kind of the center of political opposition in Medina. Some of Uthman's advisors think she's the main troublemaker, she's the main enemy, even though she's just trying to relay and process and understand complaints. Nasiha is an Islamic obligation.

Instability grows, the empire is still expanding, but there's kind of a division at the heart of it, and famously Uthman's house is besieged. There's kind of rioting in Medina. His food and his water are cut off.

Her sister wife, Umm Habibah, goes with a mule and a skin of water, and she's kind of almost attacked. Her mule is kind of... The rein is cut with one of the besieger's swords, and she falls off.

So Aisha decides to leave Medina, goes to Mecca for the pilgrimage. And again, exactly what happens in Mecca is really difficult to discern, because the subsequent historians are from the Bani Umayyah or the Abbasids or from different Shia groups, or from... Everybody is telling the story that they have heard and regard as being most valid. If you look at modern historians, they take all kinds of different views.

But certainly Mecca is divided between the followers of Uthman and the followers of the Bani Umayyah, which she doesn't relate to either. But she hears of Uthman's assassination, and she immediately says, these culprits... Even though she's been criticising Uthman, she really can't stand this idea that he's been assassinated, have to be dealt with.

And so she gathers supporters in Mecca and heads north.

The Battle of the Camel

Ali has been declared the new caliph. She's not against him, but she does think that he should be taking more stringent steps to track down and punish the assassins, who are mostly tribesmen who have vanished. Ali thinks that it would be divisive to try and track them down. That seems to have been the situation.

And of course, he's not part of it, because his own son, Imam al-Hassan, has been one of the guards of Uthman's house and was wounded during the attack. His loyalties are very clear. And he hadn't wanted to be caliph at first, but really had to be pressed when told, otherwise this whole thing is going to fall to pieces. This is like a civil war incident. You have to do it.

So out of a sense of duty, he reluctantly accepts it. So in Mecca, there's people who are opposed to Ali, which he isn't really. There's Talha and Zubair, who's her brother-in-law. Each of them thought perhaps they should be caliph.

And again, it's not really a matter of ego, but a matter of, it's my responsibility to try and sort this out, because Omar had commended them both and said both of them would be suitable to be rulers. The Holy Prophet ﷺ had died, once in Aisha's house, had brought Talha and Zubair, according to the historians, and said, when Allah's Messenger died, he was pleased with you.

So it's a really disunited army with people from different views and different factions. The only thing they did agree on was that the killers of Uthman should be brought to justice. So she sets out, almost turns back, indecisive, but she ends up in Basra in the year 36.

And again, confusing stories. It's a fairly lawless situation. Ali has not arrived yet. There's the two armies, a tent pitch between the two where the negotiations are taking place.

Aisha wanted a council to decide who was the right caliph. Would it be Ali, would it be Talha, Zubair, somebody else? She thought there should be a renegotiation of that.

Both sides, certainly Ali and Aisha wanted a peaceful resolution, but they were extremists on both sides. The discussions seemed to have been going very well when some extremists on both sides started trading arrow shots with each other and everybody felt confused, divided, and a kind of battle ensued, the Battle of the Camel, because she was in the middle of it with her palanquin trying to direct things in this chaotic world.

And it's not a huge battle by modern standards, and it's not a huge battle by the standards of, say, the Battle of Yarmouk, one of the huge battles that the Sahaba had been engaged with against neighboring empires, but it's still very painful.

Ali's forces, which are larger and more united, win. Afterwards he's startled when he goes around the battlefield to see how many great companions have been in her army. Ali orders her brother Muhammad to take her back to Mecca, and later on all the sources agree that she's kind of really sorry that she took part in this battle that kind of was a spontaneous conflagration in a chaotic situation.

So she'd say:

If only I'd died before the Day of the Camel, and she'd not be able to suppress herself from crying whenever the battle was mentioned.

Her Death

So she dies on the 17th of Ramadan in the year 58 of the Hijra. Her janazah is led by Abu Huraira, and she's buried in Al-Baqiyah.

The Merit of the Mothers of the Believers

Now I want to conclude just by going back, I know this has been a long session, but I think you'll agree that there's a lot that's important for Islam in this, in terms of politics, in terms of Islam's battle against tribalism, in terms of gender, a lot rides on this story.

By looking again at another of the books which we have, hurray, in the CMC library, in terms of this question of what does it mean to be a mother of the believers? Allah is saying that they are the mothers of the believers, although they don't have children. What does that mean?

So different scholars historically, and sometimes this can seem a rather artificial exercise, like to rank the Sahaba, so-and-so is better than this person, and he did this, and kind of like league tables, like Cardiff University is better in humanities this year than University of York.

To me, it seems a little bit artificial, because how can you really compare Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah to Az-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam? They had different virtues, different drawbacks, different experiences. It's very hard to put them in these kind of complicated league tables.

But interestingly, Ibn Hazm has this book, Risalah Fi Al-Mufadhala Baina Sahaba, an epistle on the grading, the different merits of the Sahaba. Ibn Hazm is this 11th century Andalusian scholar who's a Zahiri, very literalist, and that kind of impels him to do this. I want to see if all of these, he's got several hundred Sahaba, if I can actually create an exact list.

This all comes out of the initial disputes, who is right, who is wrong in these. Should you criticize the Sahaba? The Sunni position is you love all of them, even though their ijtihads might not always have been infallible. But that's the Sunni ethical insight. You love all of them, and their disputes leave them to Allah, because Allah knows what their intentions are.

The Khawarij and the Shia, Ibadiyya and other traditions do have ways of condemning some of the Sahaba, which the Sunnis have shown their ethical mettle by saying, All of them upright witnesses, or 100,000 of them. And that becomes characteristic of what it is to be a Sunni. Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamal.

Anyway, here is Ibn Hazm. And of course he has to deal with the question of, the superiority of the Prophet's wives over the other companions. And he actually says it. And he has various ways of doing this:

Allah makes them, they have the fiqh position of motherhood over every Muslim.

That's in addition to their merit from being companions of the Holy Prophet ﷺ.

So they have the merit of the other Sahaba, but they have the special virtue of being particularly close to him, having kept his close company, and having lived with him.

And being favoured by him.

That which no other Sahabi can rival.

So he does this. His conclusion is that they're Sahabas, but also mothers of the believers, so they're better than the other Sahaba. And then, of course, in his kind of logic-chopping way, he wants to know which of the wives are the best wives.

And he concludes:

The best of his wives were Aisha and Khadija.

Because of their great merit.

And because he said, Aisha is the most beloved of people to me.

It's another famous hadith. The merit of Aisha over other women is like the merit of meat broth over other forms of food.

Reference: Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 3769

The best of its women, Maryam, daughter of Imran. And the best of its women, Khadija bint Khuwaylid.

Reference: Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 3815

Taking into account also Khadija's coming first in Islam and her steadfastness.

And then he goes through the other wives. So we don't have to accept everything Ibn Hazm says, but it's interesting that this could have been a concept in medieval Islam that you have the Holy Prophet ﷺ and beneath him you have these 12 female apostles. And then you have the rest of the Sahaba.

It's an indication of how the civilization really revered them.

Her Devotional Life

And then finally, I wanted to read a few texts about her kind of devotional life. Because I've mentioned that these apartments were like a zawiyah. They were there doing tasbih and reciting the Quran and learning fiqh.

So, last text today. Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani, died in 430 of the hijrah. Famous student of al-Hakim An- Nisa Puri, Ibn Salah, one of the great hadith experts, calls him one of the seven great scholars of Islam.

He has this ten-volume work:

The Adornment of the Saints, in which he talks about the great ones of early Islamic history before his time with all of his isnad and gives us narrations about them to do with their kind of spiritual life.

And he has a long section on Aisha near the beginning. Let's just read a bit of this before we conclude:

Siddiqah, daughter of the Siddiq.

Which means the liberated one, daughter of the liberated one, liberated from unbelief, liberated from attachment to the world.

The beloved of the beloved, the intimate of he who is close to God, the one who is declared to be innocent of faults, the one from the doubt of people's hearts, the one who actually saw Jibreel, the messenger of the knower of the unseen worlds.

So already we get these titles.

She turned away from this world, was indifferent to its worldly pleasures and wept when those closest to her were lost to her.

Then he comes up with a Sufi saying indicating what kind of mystical virtue she represents: